Call screener and voicemail handling for proAgent outbound calls

Why we built it

The first seconds of an outbound call decide where it goes. A person, a voicemail greeting or a phone's call screener can pick up, and each needs a different response.

proAgent used to start its opening line straight away, before it knew who was listening. It talked over voicemail greetings and screeners. Voicemail messages weren't left reliably: some never recorded, and others started mid-greeting or before the beep. Call screeners, the AI assistants built into many phones, were the hardest case. Most were treated as voicemail, and some read the consumer's name back and were mistaken for the consumer.

On one outbound program, fewer than one in twenty answered calls had a live person on the line at first. When a screener answered, 94% of those calls ended as voicemail, so consumers who might have picked up never heard from the agent.

How it works

Every outbound call now opens with a short greeting while proAgent identifies who answered.

• A person goes straight to the main agent and the conversation starts.
• A call screener gets the agent's name and company and hears that it will hold. When the consumer picks up, the agent carries on to verification.
• A voicemail greeting gets a fixed callback message after the beep, the same wording every time, and the call ends.
• Screening is built into proAgent ahead of the main agent, so none of this has to be written into each agent's prompts.

What you get

Calls that a screener used to block now reach the consumer and carry on to verification and payment. On one live call, the phone's screener asked who was calling, the agent gave its name and held, and the consumer picked up, verified and scheduled a payment. Every voicemail now carries a complete message that starts after the beep, so consumers who call back know who was trying to reach them.

Call screening is live on proAgent outbound and can be switched on for any outbound agent. Talk to your Prodigal team member to turn it on.